episode 17 - design processes that enact social and organizational transformation

Today, we’re discovering more about design processes that enact social and organizational transformation. Stephanie Akkaoui-Hughes utilizes her work as an architect to promote a variety of ongoing and adaptable human interactions. She practices architecture in a way that promotes social transformation by deliberately creating incompleteness, impermanence and imperfection to invite collaborative participation of people. The design process she uses can be adapted to create anything transformative.

But first, Jelena Hercberga is a Ph.D. researcher at the University of Bristol in the UK. Her work focuses on perceptions of difference contributing to the larger question of how society can organize itself to embrace ongoing encounters with difference. She says an organization or individual doesn’t gain self understanding only by knowing oneself. Rather, the greatest self knowledge comes from deliberately interacting with those who are different than we are in some way. She also believes that goals like justice or diversity must be redefined as we progress and are never fully completed.